The SEO audit of your site, step by step

Not enough traffic? A sorry position on search engine results? It's beyond understanding... You're racking your brains wondering what to do... Optimizing the content of your website ? Add texts? Review keywords? The list is long… And if, quite simply, you were considering an SEO audit? By taking time upstream, you will save yourself a lot of worries and will be able to put your finger on the priorities to be reviewed in order to make your site a commercial tool at the service of your company and your turnover.

Tremplin Numérique reveals the steps of the SEO audit as we usually do. Follow the guide !

Complete keyword analysis

SEO is inseparable from keywords. So much so that some sites even contain too many … this is called the keyword stuffing, a technique reprimanded by Google, you should know it!

On a page, keywords are to be used like good ingredients in a cooking recipe: intelligently and sparingly. A little too much, not enough and the result no longer has the same taste. This analogy, although sprinkled with humor, is nevertheless true: Google's algorithms are endowed with incredible intelligence, capable of distinguishing a quality text (like the one you are currently reading...) from a text in which the words -keys were slipped without any sense and without any objective other than "to be first on the first page of Google". No, dear reader, keyword stuffing no longer works and is now a thing of the past.

The question is: how to seduce google with keywords, so ?

First, using the right tools is to determine which keywords you want to use. Then you have to choose those that are suitable for what you want to communicate. Then, write your content intelligently, so that each keyword finds its place, without forgetting the long tail expressions, of course!

Analysis of competitor sites

A little tour on the side of the competitors can be quite profitable, in terms of SEO. For each of the 10 selected keywords, list the main competitors to check if they are relevant… or not. You will thus obtain information on the level of competition of each of the keywords and will be able to understand the most suitable type of content, ensuring that the quality of the texts offered is higher than that of your competitors.

During this competitor analysis, also take the opportunity to take a look at the links in place, in order to judge your positioning in relation to your own keywords.

During a first overview, you will thus check, for each of the main keywords identified:

• The DA (Domain Authority)
• PA (Classified Page Authority)

How to do ? A tool like Moz can be very helpful in determining the DA and PA of keywords. The indices to be reached are 30 for the DA, which means that your chances of being well referenced are high. The keyword can therefore be retained. Of course, if your site has just been put online, you will have to look at the competitors. If their DA is below 25 – 30, again, you have every chance of ranking well on that short-term keyword.

If, on the other hand, you observe that a large part of your competitors' sites show a DA exceeding 40 – 50, it is better to leave the keyword in question aside.

As you can see here, Domain Authority (DA) is a very good indicator for retaining a keyword… or not.

Drowned between keywords, DA, PA etc. ? Leave it to us…it's our job!

Technical audit: we get into the hard part

The popular expression is “to get your hands dirty”. The technical audit of your site is nevertheless unavoidable. It identifies technical problems that may affect your natural search engine optimisation. More concretely, it is a question of identifying the elements which prevent your site from being visible and from positioning itself correctly on the search engines. For some, this translates into a lot of work…much like finding a needle in a haystack. For others, including the team of Tremplin Numérique, this task is exciting and interesting!

When we perform a technical audit, here is what we take into account:

• The loading speed of your site: if it exceeds 2 to 3 seconds, there may (even certainly) be a problem to check and there is a need to optimize
• Is your site suitable for mobile smartphones and tablets? In other words, is your site “responsive”? condition today sine qua non to exist on the Google results pages
• Is there keyword cannibalization? Do your pages compete on the same keyword? We keep the best or, if possible, combine the contents to make only one quality page.
• 302? Is your site experiencing temporary redirect issues? Better to change them to 301 redirects…
• 404? A page, no matter how pretty, containing the 404 information, especially when it is the landing point of an incoming link, can hurt, very badly for SEO. And what a waste!
• Is your robots.txt file set up correctly? Are your pages well indexed?
• Have you thought about creating a sitemap?
• Do you exist on Google? Type on Google and check for yourself. If it appears, it's a good sign: it means that Google has indexed it.
• If you have an e-commerce site, are there duplicate product pages? Attention… Panda watches… The Panda algorithm fights against poor quality content. He simply hates copy-pasted, what is called, in web jargon, “duplicate content”
• Is your site well done? Has the tree structure, that is to say the architecture, been well thought out to ensure that your site is easily searchable by Internet users and search engines alike?
• Are your URLs optimized? Are they over-optimized? Watch out for these details that can hinder your race to the first position of Google results!
• Do you have a good internal network? In other words, are there links between the different pages of your site, a logical coherence between the contents?
• Etc

Too many numbers? Too much jargon? We speak your language ! Entrust us with your SEO audit, we love it!

Auditing your pages

Here we are interested in the pages of your site: what they show to visitors and what search engines get out of them. Geeks talk about “on-page” optimization 😉

First, you need unique content. Even if you believe that your content belongs only to you, because you created it, nothing and no one can guarantee that it is unique. Take the time to use a tool like Copyscape to see that your content hasn't been stolen by a malicious developer...

Once you are reassured, it is advisable to look at your pages with a little more depth:

• Is the main keyword in the Title tag?
• Is the keyword in the Meta Description?
• Does the keyword appear in the first paragraph of your text?
• Is your page URL optimized?
• Do the images contain the main keyword?
• Does the last sentence contain the main keyword?

The on-page audit: the team of Tremplin Numérique makes it his business. Entrust us with your site and we will tell you about it!

Auditing your content

Here is a section in which we are not going to use technical jargon… We are going to talk about the content of your pages. Is it relevant? Informative? Pleasant to read ? Engaging? Is the information you provide verified? Are there any spelling and/or grammatical errors?

On your pages, is there a lot of advertising content? Do you really think that Internet users like advertising? Neither did Panda (remember… Google's algorithm, mentioned earlier…). CQFD.

We think (a little anyway) of the users

The user experience: without it, no website! To gauge what people think of your site, Google Analytics is an excellent source. In particular, it gives you the bounce rates (i.e. the pages on which Internet users arrive to leave immediately…), the average time spent on your site, the exit pages, the number of recurring visitors, the searches including your keywords and social signals.

Inbound links

The famous backlinks, Have you heard of it ? The better they are, the more your site is likely to have a good SEO. The reverse is also true… So if you are offered backlinks, first make sure you know where they come from.

The team of Tremplin Numérique guides you and accompanies you in the choice of your backlinks. We analyze:

• Their relevance
• Their level of authority (the famous DA we were talking about above)
• Their diversity
• The diversification of anchor texts
• The volume of referring domains
• The speed of propagation of backlinks

For Local SEO: Citation Analysis

“I think therefore I am” is a quote. We agree. But that has nothing to do with citation analysis as part of local SEO optimization. This is to check the consistency of NAP – W and analyze the different directories on which your site could appear.

All of this is fine, you tell us… but where do you start to establish your SEO audit? And if you contact the team of Tremplin Numérique right now ?